Case Study
PawSaver
The Project
PawSaver is a platform that allows users to easily find affordable pet care, as well as find tools that can help them in paying for expensive veterinary care.
I managed all aspects of the project, from user research and ideation, all the way through to prototyping and user testing.
Role: UX designer & researcher
Team: Individual project
Duration: 8 weeks
Tools: Figma, otter.ai
Designed for: iOS
CONTEXT
After bringing my cats (Priscilla & Penelope) to the vet one day, I thought to myself how the cost of pet care altogether has become increasingly inflated and that there must be a way to make the process of finding affordable healthcare more streamlined for those looking to obtain help in paying for veterinary care and any other aspect of pet care. This is where the idea of PawSaver bloomed from, as well as the overall passion I have for ensuring animals are well cared for.
priscilla
Penelope
The process
1
2
3
4
5
PROTOTYPE
TEST
6
IDEATE
EMPATHISE
DEFINE
REFINE
EMPATHISE
I started this project by narrowing down who my target user would be. This was easy as I knew that I wanted to help lower-income individuals or families be able to afford to provide the necessary care for their furry family members. Through secondary research, I was able to find out exactly how much people in Canada struggle to care for their pets with the constant rise of living costs.
1/5 pet owners
in the past 12 months were not
able to access the necessary
preventative health care for their pets due to affordability.
approx. 800,000
households in Ontario have
pets and live in poverty.
30% of animal surrenders
occur due to the pets medical health
and the owner’s inability to access and financially provide
the necessary pet care.
primary research
After reviewing secondary research, I needed to get insight on first hand experiences, so I conducted user interviews to understand my primary user’s needs, motivations and pain points.
I asked the participants a series of questions all about their pets, how they go about affording care for their pets and if they have ever had to make any difficult decisions based on pet care affordability.
I recruited 3 individuals that fit the following criteria:
Low-income (earning under $30k/year)
Between 25-50 years of age
Primary caregiver for a pet
Residing in Canada
Interview Findings
Once all the interviews were conducted, all the data was gathered into an affinity map. We then took all the pain points, behaviours and motivations and organized them into themes to determine what theme has the most pain points, and would therefore act as the basis for the problem we would be solving with our product.
Our research found that the theme with the most pain points turned out to be Veterinary Prices.
define
I wanted to further step into the target user’s mind and in order to do so, our persona Phoebe came to life!
Phoebe is a culmination of all our interview findings put into one individual to represent our target user’s goals, behaviours, pain points, as well as the journey they likely take when finding pet care.
persona
experience map
How might we help low-income individuals provide their pets with the necessary healthcare needed, so that they can keep their pets healthy within their financial means?
ideate
Now that there’s Phoebe who represents our target user, I created user stories to identify the challenges that real users might face who are in Phoebe’s position. These user stories also illustrate the possible solutions that could help us solve Phoebe’s challenges.
After going through all the users stories and narrowing down which epic had the most challenges, I created a primary task flow that would outline our user’s journey to helping them solve the challenge of finding reliable resources for low-income individuals/families with pets.
With the user’s feelings and time in mind, I wanted to make sure the design of Paw Saver was as easy and seamless to use as possible.
It was important that I made it simple for the user to find resources that could help them better manage veterinary costs for their pets.
sketches
homepage
customized search
grant application page
search result page
prototype
mid-fidelity
Throughout the development of the wireframes, I held 2 rounds of user tests where I asked 5 participants to complete the task of applying for a grant through PawSaver. Both rounds of testing were extremely helpful and aided me in identifying further improvements to my design such as introducing a search bar instead of a drop down list during the customized search questions, designing a tracker so users can view status of their applications, as well as adding overlay screens to explain why the app asks for certain information such as income.
Let’s talk brand identity!
Consistent colours and imagery used within an app helps users identify the brand,
as well as set the tone and vibe of the entire experience.
For my app I wanted the tone to be light and happy because worrying about affording pet care can be stressful.
moodboard
The moodboard created for PawSaver has a lot of pink, orange and blue hues that are intended to keep the user in high-spirits whilst using the app. The moodboard also has
fun and playful visuals that describe how I wanted the app to feel.
For the PawSaver wordmark I wanted to keep with the playful vibe so I chose to use the font Luckiest Guy which is a big quirky sans-serif font.
The font add with the workmark colour gives the overall brand a bright, fun feel.
wordmark
For PawSaver’s primary colour I chose pink since pink brings out playful and nurturing vibes. Again, it was important to use a colour that would keep users happy while completing their tasks.
Colours
primary colour
secondary colour
#E04376
#FFD9E5
I also created an app icon for iOS devices that suits PawSaver’s brand. I decided to keep the icon simple so as to not overwhelm the users homepage.
app icon
high-fidelity
Without further a do, I’m excited to present the completed prototype of PawSaver! There have been many ups and downs, as well as lessons learned throughout this entire process, however I am confident that this app would be extremely useful to pet owners in real life and I’m proud of the overall outcome of this project.
It’s important to me that PawSaver is accessible to everyone who wants to use it.
To make the app as accessible as possible I used the font Helvetica Neue which has a large x-height, bold outlines, and increased character spacing to make the text easier for people with visual impairments to read. Additionally, Helvetica Neue also supports accessibility readers and screen magnifiers.
As for the colours used through the app, I ensured the majority of colour combinations were accessible and passed WCAG 2.0 requirements.
WCAG 2.0 level AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
accessibility
#1A1A1A
#FFD9E5
on top of
Contrast Ratio = 13.51:1
on top of
#E04376
#FFD9E5
Contrast Ratio = 3.11:1
on top of
#FFFFFF
#1A1A1A
Contrast Ratio = 17.4:1
Responsive Marketing website
Responsive Marketing website
To promote PawSaver I created a conceptual responsive marketing website that allows potential future users to see all that PawSaver has to offer!
What’s next?
The journey to completing this project was full of blood, sweat and tears, but it was also a journey of growth and discovery.
Can any design ever really be 100% complete and never to be touched again? No!
For next steps I would love to do user testing on the high-fidelity version and further discover what features PawSaver could include to further assist pet owner’s.
Here’s to the future and what exciting things it may hold!
wait! before you go…
multi-platform challenge
To further better user experience, I created a desktop version of PawSaver, so that user’s could browse and search for their various pet care needs from the comfort of their laptops.